Analysis  Browns defensive staff loaded with experience

Mike Holmgren’s background is on offense, but the Browns’ president has had a heavy hand in determining who will coach the team’s defense. Browns writer Steve Doerschuk analyzes the coaching group that was completed this week.

If experience is the best teacher, the Browns might be in fine shape with their new defensive coaching staff.

Dick Jauron and Ray Rhodes, however, must throw their combined 71 years of NFL playing and coaching duties at a very daunting question:

Who on earth will they teach?

Jauron, the new coordinator, and Rhodes, the new special assistant, are installing a four-man defensive line after the Browns spent six years with a three-man front.

Ahtyba Rubin is the only Browns defensive lineman who comes close to passing as a proven starter — and he didn’t become one until late in the 2009 season.

Jauron and Rhodes go back much further than that. Both were born in October 1950. Both played a bit more than five years in the NFL, and their playing careers ended in 1980.

They first worked together in 1992 in Green Bay, the year Mike Holmgren became head coach. Rhodes was defensive coordinator; Jauron was defensive backs coach. They last worked together in 1993, not long before Rhodes became head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.

In 1999, Rhodes was hired to replace Holmgren as head coach of the Packers. That same year, Jauron got the first of his two head coaching jobs, with the Bears.

It was a rough year for Rhodes, who went 8-8 and was fired. He split his two games against Jauron’s Bears.

TIES TO HOLMGREN

Jauron hasn’t worked for Holmgren since ’93. Rhodes took one more turn, working for Holmgren in Seattle from 2003-07.

Head coach Pat Shurmur has worked with neither Jauron nor Rhodes until now, making this a game of trusting Holmgren.

Holmgren’s fingerprints also are all over the hiring of Dwaine Board, the new defensive line coach. Board, 54, was a defensive end with the 49ers when Holmgren was a 49ers coach. He was Holmgren’s defensive line coach in Seattle from 2003-08.

The new defensive staff does include a Shurmur confidant, Chuck Bullough. Chuck and his brother, Shane, were Shurmur’s Michigan State teammates on a team that won a Rose Bowl. Shane Bullough was best man in Pat and Jennifer Shurmur’s wedding.

Chuck Bullough, 42, has had just one NFL coaching job, working as a defensive assistant for Jauron in Chicago for all five of the years Jauron had the Bears job. His expertise is linebackers, although his title is “defensive assistant.”

The title of linebackers coach belongs to Bill Davis, 45. He began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Michigan State in 1991, shortly after Shurmur was promoted from Michigan State graduate assistant to full-time coach.

Davis’ influences include both of this year’s Super Bowl defensive coordinators, Dom Capers and Dick LeBeau. Those three were together with the Steelers from 1992-94. Then, Capers became head coach of the Panthers in 1995, and Davis was in Charlotte with him for four years.

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Having absorbed the ways of the 3-4 under Capers and LeBeau, Davis should be able to help the Browns players who have been in a 3-4 make the transition to a 4-3.

The only holdover on defense from Eric Mangini’s staff is defensive backs coach Jerome Henderson. He is an example of how all of Shurmur’s staff is interconnected somehow — he played for Philadelphia in 1995, the year Rhodes became the Eagles’ head coach.

Henderson, 41, had an eight-year NFL playing career. One reason he was retained was to keep developing 2010 draft picks Joe Haden and T.J. Ward.

Shurmur will spend most of his time organizing the offense. The defense is Jauron’s baby. He’s expecting an influx of defensive linemen.